


Close Neighbors

by Araine



Category: Dragon Age (Video Games), Dragon Age II
Genre: Alternate Universe, Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Alternate Universe - Rock Band, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-01-12
Updated: 2016-01-12
Packaged: 2018-05-13 09:43:36
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,617
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5703106
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Araine/pseuds/Araine
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Hawke didn't mean to start a band with her entire building, but that's exactly what she did.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Close Neighbors

**Author's Note:**

> Inspired by [this](http://luxheroica.tumblr.com/post/137140386965/parsethus-jumpingjacktrash) tumblr post, entirely.

It starts when Hawke gets an electric guitar. 

She’s played for most of her life, ever since she sat on her father’s knee and he showed her the chords, patiently strummed while she attempted to get her tiny fingers around the bridge. She’s got music in her blood, dad used to say.

She had to sell her old electric guitar in back in college when money was tight and rent was looming, so when she comes down the stairs of her mom’s house on a sleepy Christmas morning and sees the telltale guitar shape wrapped in red-and-green paper, she nearly shrieks. ‘To Marian, From Bethany’, the present reads, and it’s propped up next to a suspiciously heavy and box-shaped present marked ‘From Carver’ that she suspects is an amp. 

Hawke hugs both her siblings extra tight, and a few days later loads up the guitar and the amp into the back seat of her rusted up old Toyota, puts the dog in the front seat (“But just this once,” and gives Tank a stern look), and trundles over freshly-plowed streets back to her apartment building. 

She slings the guitar case over her shoulder, then puts Tank on a leash and finagles the amp into her arms with the rest of her presents for the journey up to the second floor. It admittedly takes a minute, but it’s cold enough that she’s not willing to make a second trip. 

The first thing she does after seeing after a few necessities is plug the amp in and start jamming with the electric guitar. 

It’s a Fender, and a nice one, and the strings sing when she slides her fingers along them. She starts with a few classics and some of her dad’s songs, and then just whatever comes to mind, until Tank starts getting anxious and she has to take him out for a long run. 

The next couple of days when she gets home from work and feels ready to punch someone because her boss Meeran is an asshole, she pulls out her new Fender and starts to play. It makes her feel better at least. 

She’s a week into this routine when the drums start. 

\--

Isabela has, by and large, followed only a few simple rules in her life: life is short and money is for spending, don’t mix tequila and vodka, and if your neighbors are being obnoxious, be obnoxious right back. With her previous neighbors this meant faking a lot of kinky sex (and having some kinky sex) and generally not getting her point across. With her new upstairs neighbor it apparently means dragging her old drumset out of storage. 

Her upstairs neighbor has been playing electric guitar every afternoon for a week, and damn it, they’re actually really good. Which kind of makes it worse, because if they were bad she might consider just banging on the ceiling with a broom instead of setting up a drum kit.

Isabela looks fondly at the old thing, which she bought mostly as a way to piss her mom off as much as possible, though she did have the odd daydream about headlining a glam-rock act. She was always more  _ enthusiastic  _ than proficient, but she managed.

So when the upstairs neighbor begins with the chords to Bad Moon Rising, Isabela starts up a brisk 4/4 beat, bum- _ tss _ -bumbum- _ tss.  _ The guitar music pauses and Isabela smiles to herself. It worked, at least for a few seconds.

Then the music starts upstairs again and it’s  _ in time _ with her this time. In response, Isabela plays louder. Upstairs, guitar neighbor turns up their amp. Together they’re probably managing to piss off the whole building.

They get through Bad Moon Rising and Dani California and then from upstairs her neighbor starts a song that Isabela doesn’t know. She has to listen to find the beat that feels right, that hits right against her ears, but once she finds it she goes for it. 

And damn it, it’s a lot of fun. 

\--

When she struck out on her own, one of the first pieces of furniture that Merrill installed was a keyboard. It wasn’t the big upright piano that, to her knowledge, was still sitting in Aunt Marethari’s parlor. After the fight she’d had with Aunt Marethari upon leaving, she wasn’t exactly keen on going back there, even for her piano. Years and years of private lessons, from when she was six, and she had to leave her piano behind.

Usually she plays with headphones in-- no need to upset the neighbors, after all-- but over the past few days listening to her next door neighbor jam with whoever was playing the drums downstairs, it probably wasn’t a concern. She had at least a few neighbors that she wouldn’t upset.

And she hasn’t had anyone to play with in ages, since she doesn’t talk to her cousins anymore. It seems like such a fun idea, to play with people she didn’t even know, to just let the music connect them. 

So the next time the electric guitar starts up next door, and the drums start beating somewhere downstairs, Merrill unplugs her headphones and joins in. Something in C# major, somewhere between jaunty and melancholy, and she just lets the keys flow under her fingers. 

\--

Anders hadn’t  _ meant _ to start singing. He’d just meant to practice a bit, see how his verse sounded when said out loud. Poetry slams aren’t set to music-- aren’t  _ meant _ to be set to music, at least. That’s why they’re called poetry slams, after all.

Except he finds himself tapping along to the drums from upstairs, fingers unconsciously keeping time against his knee, and there’s a melody from upstairs that’s striking the mood just right, and something in the wailing guitar moves him. 

Days spent in the choir room after school come back to him, leaning over the piano, trying to keep his obvious crush from seeming  _ too  _ obvious. He’s funneled those emotions into his poetry, subsuming teenage angst into something far more profound, but he hasn’t done much singing since then. 

He’s surprised how easily it comes back, even if his voice breaks over the falsetto once or twice. 

Later that night, the applause is thunderous when he sings, and he wonders how other poem’s he’s written might sound when set to music.

\--

They’re missing something, when they play. Something to make them truly sublime.

Fenris has been listening to them for a while, determined not to join in. He’s not going to, no matter how many times he listens to that singing guitar, or the raucous drums, or the faint strains of keyboard. They’re good, no doubt about it, especially for a bunch of people playing from different apartments.

He hasn’t touched his guitar, not since the brief flash of fame that left him burned. 

It’s been a long time, since music used to be pure and fun. Since he’d been a naive kid, convinced he was going to get his sister and his mom out of the shithold situation they were living in, by the power of his music alone. Since he’d dragged his guitar from hotel room to crappy apartment, the only thing he was unwilling to sell. 

He even sold himself in the end, and look what that had gotten him. Dreams broken and in debt up to his eyeballs to his manager who just stole all of his music anyways. It was too much. 

He left that life behind long ago, or so Fenris would’ve thought. Until music ambushed him through his apartment walls. Until he listened and started thinking about the music that they’re making.

He’s not sure how he finds himself in a music store, looking at the bass guitars. He’s really not sure how he ends up forking over $200 for a very basic bass and a tiny amp, except that salespeople are annoyingly good at their jobs. 

As he trudges home in the cold February air, clutching the guitar case in gloved fingers, he thinks--  _ fuck Danarius.  _ He gave up music because of that asshole, and honestly, he hates it every day. 

When they start up that evening, he plugs in the bass and the amp and joins in. 

\--

It’s the middle of another jam session when there’s a knock at Hawke’s door. She stops playing, sets her guitar down gently on her amp. The drums stop downstairs, and slowly the rest-- slowly fading out, confused over the abrupt pause to their session. 

Hawke hauls Tank back by his collar to keep him from immediately attacking whoever’s at the door with affection, unlocks the deadbolt, and opens the door. There’s a dwarf there that she’s never met before, wearing an open coat with a v-neck shirt even though it’s the middle of February. Hawke has to bend down to look him in the eye.

“Hi,” he says, and extends a hand for her to shake. “Varric Tethras, at your service.”

She shakes his hand, bemused. “Marian Hawke.”

“Well, Marian--”

“Hawke,” she corrects automatically.

He grins, an infectious sort of smile that makes her grin back. “Hawke,” he amends. “Look, I’ve been listening to you guys play for the last couple of months--”

Oh. Great. She was afraid of this. She doesn’t actually want to end whatever little impromptu band has formed of her closest neighbors, but she also doesn’t want anyone to complain to the landlord. “Look, I’m sorry about all that,” she says. “It was just a bit of fun…”

“Actually,” Varric cuts her off, “I kind of co-own a bit of an indie record label with my brother. How would you guys like to start an actual band?”

Hawke breaks into a smile. 


End file.
